Lightning from a tornadic thunderstorm passing over Clearwater, Kansas strikes at an open field.REUTERS

WASHINGTON — The head of The Associated Press lashed out yesterday at the Justice Department’s seizure of the news agency’s phone records, saying it is already having a chilling effect on sources and is “unconstitutional.”

In his first television interview since the scandal broke, AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt called the seizure of thousands of reporter phone records by the Obama administration “abusively” and “harassingly” excessive.

“I really don’t know what their motive is,” Pruitt said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“I know what the message being sent is. It’s that if you talk to the press, we’re going to go after you.”

The Justice Department collected records from 21 of the news agency’s phones last year in trying to find the person who leaked a story about a terrorist airplane-bombing plot that was thwarted by the CIA. The department failed to notify the AP about the seizure and violated its own rules by failing to narrow the search, Pruitt said.

“Under their own rules, they are required to narrow their request as narrowly as possible so as not to tread upon the First Amendment,” Pruitt said. “And yet, they had a broad, sweeping collection and they did it secretly.

White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer yesterday defended the Justice Department move. “National-security leaks are dangerous, people that put the lives of our intelligence officers, our military at risk,” Pfeiffer said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The Justice Department retrieved records for two months last year from AP phones in Washington, New York and Hartford, Conn.

Pruitt sent the Justice Department a letter last week asking that the records obtained by the department be returned and copies destroyed.

“We don’t question their right to conduct these sorts of investigations. We just think they went about it the wrong way, so sweeping, so secretly, so abusively and harassingly and overbroad that it is an unconstitutional act,” Pruitt said.